Can the creaking machinery of the few remaining record pressing plants cope with demand?

On an industrial estate in Röbel, 90 miles north of Berlin, the vinyl presses at the Optimal factory were grinding and pumping away. They made a percussive racket – regular clunks, wheezes, and hisses, underlain by a droning hum – and created a distinct aroma, sharp and metallic, suggestive of steam engines and old cars: not instantly recognisable to a British visitor like me, perhaps, but the singular smell of things being made. My guide to the Optimal plant was its operations director, Peter Runge. Together, we watched copies of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Live From KCRW tumble from one of the machines. Across a narrow aisle, a press dedicated to seven-inch records was spitting out copies of The Boy From New York City, a 1964 single by the Ad Libs, a soul group from Bayonne, New Jersey. A few yards away sat fresh stock of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Next to those was a growing pile of the album Clandestine by the Swedish death metal band Entombed, being pressed on purple vinyl. Beside each machine, bins were collecting surplus plastic shorn off the edges of each disc, to be fed back into the production process.

“Instant recycling!” said Runge, who stared at the factory’s operations through rimless glasses. He grew up, he told me, in Rostock, in the old German Democratic Republic. When he was 19, he applied for an ausreiseantrag – an East German exit visa, the same day as the East German premier Erich Honecker visited West Berlin. This modest act of subversion led to an appointment with the Stasi, and he was barred from going to university. So he got a job in the university’s workshop, helping to build electronic prototypes, where he gained a practical understanding of engineering. When the Berlin Wall fell, two years later, he belatedly became an undergraduate at the same institution, and eventually earned a PhD in industrial maintenance. He joined Optimal Media in 1997, was put in charge of “process optimisation and re-engineering” and given the job of setting up a production planning system. Now 46, he oversees the manufacture of DVDs, CDs and books, but the task in which he takes the most pleasure is supervising the production of vinyl records, in what he and his colleagues claim is Europe’s biggest pressing plant. Their clients are split between the major record companies – who have trusted Optimal with the work of such titans as the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and David Bowie – and the independent companies who kept the vinyl format alive through the 1990s and early 2000s while the rest of a terrified music industry embraced digital technology. Optimal’s machines run 24 hours day, for most of the year, and production capacity has to be booked up to a year in advance. And every hiss and wheeze of the company’s machines attests to a story that, 20 or so years ago, would have seemed unthinkable: the renaissance of the vinyl record.

In the first half of 2014, officially registered sales of vinyl in the US stood at around 4m, confirming an increase of more than 40% compared to the same period in 2013. In the UK, this year’s accredited sales will come in at around 1.2m, more than 50% up on last year. That may represent a tiny fraction of the industry’s estimated sales of recorded music, but still, a means of listening to music essentially invented in the 19th century and long since presumed to be dead is growing at speed, and the presses at Optimal – along with similar facilities smattered across the UK, mainland Europe, the US and beyond – are set to grind and pump on, into the future.

“Isn’t it strange?” Runge mused. “I’m an automation engineer. I never thought I’d be dealing with vinyl. It’s unexpected. But it’s also unexpectable.” He shouted this over the din of the machinery. Each press sat in a space not much more than four metres square. Two circular paper labels were mechanically plucked from one end, while tiny vinyl pellets were sucked into a steam-driven heating process. The result was a hunk of plastic with the circumference of a beer mat, heated to 130C, to which the labels were attached, while 50 tonnes of hydraulic pressure squashed and spread it into a disc. Metal stampers pressed against either side, and it was quickly cooled to 40C. With another clunk, the finished product was dropped on to a spindle, ready to be inserted in its sleeve. The whole cycle had taken 27 seconds. Each day, the factory makes somewhere between 50,000 and 55,000 records.

American inventor who created surround sound remembered as ‘a true visionary’

JAMES VINCENT

Ray Dolby, the American audio pioneer and inventor of surround sound, has died at the age of 80.

Dolby, who founded his namesake company in 1965, suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and was recently diagnosed with acute leukaemia. He died in his home at San Fransisco

His work in noise reduction and audio technology created an entire industry dedicated to delivering compelling and thrilling audio. The Dolby Stereo system was responsible for creating unique sounds of films from A Clockwork Orange to Star Wars.

“Today we lost a friend, mentor and true visionary,” said Kevin Yeaman, president and chief executive of Dolby Laboratories.

Dolby’s work earned him a number of notable awards, including several Emmys, two Oscars and a Grammy. Other honours included receiving the National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton and an induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in the US and the Royal Academy of Engineers in the UK.

Although his innovations in audio recording and reproduction made a big impact in cinemas, Dolby’s work also found its way into millions of homes. For many his name is permanently associated with reducing the hiss in tape playback.

“Though he was an engineer at heart, my father’s achievements in technology grew out of a love of music and the arts,” said Tom Dolby, a film-maker and novelist. “He brought his appreciation of the artistic process to all of his work in film and audio recording.”

Dolby was born in Portland Oregon, and began his professional work at Ampex Corporation, earning his first patents for videotape recording systems before he’d left college.

He graduated from Standford University and went on to study at Cambridge, founding Dolby Studios in London in 1965. In 1976 he moved to San Francisco where the company established its headquarters.

“Ray really managed to have a dream job,” said Dagmar Dolby, his wife of 47 years. “Because he could do exactly what he wanted to do, whichever way he wanted to do it, and in the process, did a lot of good for many music and film lovers. And in the end, built a very successful company.”

Since news of his passing, tributes have rushed in for Dolby, with co-workers describing him as an inspiring and thoughtful man, who cared passionately about engineering.

“To be an inventor, you have to be willing to live with a sense of uncertainty, to work in the darkness and grope toward an answer, to put up with the anxiety about whether there is an answer,” he once said.

He is survived by his wife, sons Tom and David, and four grandchildren. See below for a video tribute to Dolby’s life and works compiled by Dolby Studios.

At Last, the tuner to complete Roksan’s crisp-looking Caspian range has
arrived. It’s an FM-only 5O-preset unit, cunningly controlled by just two
knobs and a pair of buttons. You get manual and seek tuning,
a signal strength centre-tuning display, mono/stereo switching and an
autostore system able to find the strongest stations in your area and
assign them to presets. Operation is a matter of clicking the
left knob round to find presets, or twiddling the right one for further
manual tuning. Add the optional Roksan Caspian System Commander
and you get full control of the tuner from your armchair. However, there’s
no AM reception, and not a sniff of the Radio Data System.
As Compensation you get a tuner with a smooth fluid sound, plus plenty
of insight into the recorded or broadcast ambience. Location panel
games or discussions sound suitably atmospheric, while concert hall relays
are similarly open and attractive. Instrumental timbres are appealing, if
the radio can sound a little lush at times, and voices nicely detailed.

The Roksan also ensures voices have good character and are easy to
follow, while the compressed sound of rock and pop radio benefits from
the Caspian’s mix of warmth and insight, being filled out a little and
having reasonable attack. But though this tuner is good, it’s
not without rivals from the likes of Denon and Marantz. And then there’s
the Creek T43: it has the sound, the three bands and
remote control for £349. All of which suggests the Roksan at £595, will appeal
mainly to existing Caspian owners.